Go West, Young Filmmaker, Go West

California could use a movie that celebrates California, something positive and self-assuring, something that shows off the state: Pacific sunsets, snow-laced mountains, wind-kissed deserts. Something Time-less.

What we’ll get, though, is “Bugsy,” the mobster movie about a bad guy from L.A.

South Carolina will get sunsets and shorelines and the awesome Atlantic in Barbra Streisand’s movie version of “The Prince of Tides.” Beaufort, where most of that picture was shot, will surely get its share of next spring’s tourist dollars as visitors hunt out the shrimpers and the sea islands of the movie.

In recent times, there’s nothing as healing for a state’s suffering economy as a movie-making crew. Money goes to the locals used during shooting but far more might come from visitors wanting to see the magic places of the movies along with such other treasures of the state as its monuments, statues, motels and coffee shops.

That’s why many Western states, particularly the mountain and Plains states, are pursuing film and television companies with roundup passion, trying to hook up with the next “Dances With Wolves” or the next “City Slickers.”

The West is hot again with a number of film and television projects about Western history, American Indians and the contemporary West being shopped from state to state.

And a new breed of media-savvy state officials, people who know just which end of the camera to focus on, are in eager pursuit of these filmmakers, television producers, documentarians and commercial directors.

The location scout is to the new West what the Indian scout was to the old. Film offices have replaced land offices. And shoot has taken on new meaning west of the Mississippi.

This Plains campaign is one that uses videos and 35-millimeter slide shows to show what’s there, low-interest loans to attract filmmakers, and hotel room rates and rental car deals to win producers to their states.

Film commissions may be the only growth industry left in the West. Until two years ago, many were part-time adjuncts to state tourism offices. Now they’re in state capitals and municipalities and operate full time.

In South Dakota, where the role model of all recent Western film successes was shot--”Dances With Wolves”--the film office there was set up as a full-time operation only two years ago, just in time to capture the hearts and minds of Kevin Costner and Jim Wilson as they considered locations. There’s also a new group called the Licota Film Commission started by Patty Runs After-Swallow that hopes to, in her words, “develop cultural awareness of Native Americans.”

Nebraska, which lost out to South Dakota in the “Dances With Wolves” competition--it didn’t have enough buffaloes and importing the animals would have been too expensive--swarms with film offices. There’s the state office in Lincoln plus a Lincoln city commission and a couple of others in Omaha and Grand Island.

A few years before “Dances,” the movie “Terms of Endearment” helped convince Nebraskans they could find their place in Hollywood’s scheme of things. That movie spun off not only film offices but a stream of visitors to the state, people supposedly who wanted to experience the small-town life depicted in the film.

See the movie, visit the real thing.

So the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, where “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was shot, has become a major tourist attraction.

The buffalo ranch near Pierre, S.D., where much of “Dances” was shot, has become a tourist magnet. And the Midnight Star Saloon in Deadwood, S.D., was taken over by the brothers Dan and Kevin Costner, its restaurant, bar and gaming casino rebuilt and the tourist business has never been better in that historic lead-mining town.

In Wyoming, dude cattle drives have become a major source of revenue, thanks to “City Slickers,” which wasn’t shot there but in Colorado and New Mexico. Wanna-be roundup artists of all persuasions who think they can work cattle down from high-ground pastures can buy their way into a saddle. For cattle ranchers facing economic hard times, these imitation cowpersons have often been the difference between bust and boom.

In the Northwest, a hotel and coffee shop in Snoqualmie Falls, Wash., have become a basic part of tourist life there ever since the first cup of coffee and doughnuts were served up in television’s “Twin Peaks.”

Talk to any of the film commissioners in these states and they say interest in Western locations has never been stronger.

Imagine Films Entertainment this year shot the movie “Far and Away,” starring Tom Cruise, in Montana and Ireland.

The Hallmark Hall of Fame people recently completed Willa Cather’s “O Pioneers!” in Nebraska.

“Thunderheart,” a movie about a modern shootout at Wounded Knee, was completed this year at the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

“Licota Moon,” a two-hour pilot for Fox, was shot this year in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming and will be screened early next year as a possible hour TV series.

A major PBS series on Western history is being researched now among state film offices. Documentary filmmakers have hit the West strongly in great numbers this year with projects based on Native Americans. Commercial producers, usually carmakers, have enriched Western states with their projects. There’s something salable about racing a car across the Badlands, spanning canyons and fording wild rivers.

“Dances With Wolves” has become the seminal project for South Dakota state film officers. It provided jobs, training and revenues for the entire time it was shot there. The movie’s scenery and stories brought visitors and new business activities. And that continued as the movie moved into its video version.

Film officers throughout the West are scanning the horizon for the next “Dances.” But no one will say what’s up next. You don’t reveal your hand in this game of poker. “Can’t tell you until the trucks roll up,” says Gary Keller, South Dakota’s film coordinator.

Rustlers, it seems, still work the West.